BucketLabs - Perspectives
Overview
BucketLabs was founded by the management team of NEC NZ Smart Cities with the aim of providing a platform for contributors and consumers to collaborate on data in a way that encourages communities of all sizes to share learnings. We strongly believed that there was a better way to use data for public good while simultaneously fueling entrepreneurial endeavours in IoT and AI, thereby empowering citizens to become true stakeholders in community data and decisions.
I was responsible for leading the design of the Perspectives platform, which was created to provide insights and a deeper understanding of the physical, social and natural challenges faced by cities.
The platform adopted a unique approach to offer a well-balanced comprehension of a particular aspect of a city or any other location by providing customised data visualisations using an exploration tool. By combining several correlated datasets and utilising frameworks and models, each Perspective distilled complex, interrelated measurements into an easily comprehensible and shareable format.
The Perspectives platform offered valuable insights into core strategic areas, which helped stakeholders identify the right questions to ask.
My contribution
The team
Year
2018-2019
Process
Developing Perspectives was a challenging project that required a comprehensive understanding of complex, interrelated geospatial information. The goal was to translate this information into a user-friendly, easily explorable, and easy-to-comprehend platform.
To approach the development, three main areas were considered:
- Firstly, research was conducted to understand the problems that councils and local governments were trying to solve.
- Secondly, datasets were sourced and correlated to uncover valuable insights and information.
- Thirdly, a user experience was developed that made accessing geospatial information easy, combined related and relevant data to increase the potential of new insights, and presented it in a format that was easy to understand.
Outcome
The Perspectives platform succeeded in helping councils with their decision-making for social housing. It utilised data from both external and local council sources and consolidated them to reveal insights across various asset, social, and economic factors. As a result, town planners had a more comprehensive perspective, which enabled them to make more informed decisions.